Village trustees hear feedback on Century Blvd. redevelopment

MILLERTON — On Saturday, Feb. 1, a public information meeting was held to discuss the “complete street” plan for Century Boulevard.

Village of Millerton trustees Matthew Hartzog and David Sherman have been involved with the preparation of forming the new look along Century Boulevard.

“Matt Hartzog and I have been involved in relative to those boards and work that we do to see what we can do with Century Boulevard,” said Sherman, “We realize that in order to proceed into the future, we really need to have a good plan that everyone, most everyone, likes.”

The Village of Millerton is working with Tighe & Bond for this project, an engineering, landscape architecture, planning and environmental science consultant company.

Brandee Nelson, Vice-President at Tighe & Bond, ran the meeting with a presentation including renderings of what the Boulevard could potentially look like with their plans, as well as taking advice from local residents.

“I myself am a civil engineer with a land use planning and development background, and we’re here today to start a conversation,” said Nelson, “We’re here to talk about the community’s vision for Century Boulevard.”

According to Sherman, the Village has received funding from the Berkshire Taconic Northeast Dutchess Fund and from Hudson River Valley Greenway in their community planning funds, which will go toward the cost of this street renovation.

“From the 2018 Millerton Pedestrian Plan, one of the future projects in that plan was to re-envision Century Boulevard and make it a complete street,” Nelson said. “A complete street is serving a variety of needs to the community. There’s pedestrian movement along that street. We know we have limited sidewalks out here, parking, trees, perhaps lighting, perhaps stormwater management, there could be a lot of different things in a complete street.”

Nelson noted the importance of parking on Century Boulevard and how this plan can help pedestrians get to the shops in the Village safely. She also said planners need to lay out a certain number of handicap accessibility spots, electric vehicle chargers and also provide a crosswalk in their “complete street.”

Century Boulevard’s width ranges from 70 feet to 93 feet, which surpasses the average street width of 50 feet, according to Nelson. Though the extra room allows more offerings to be installed, keeping up with that much pavement can be continually costly.

“We want to think, ‘Can we accommodate some green space there? How can we allocate this space in a way that is economical for operation and maintenance in the future?’” Nelson said. “Look how big that paved area is and that it doesn’t have any kind of organizational framework. There’s no striping. Not even a center line striping ... The day we were down here, people were kind of parked everywhere, and they were parked at different depths. We should think about how we can organize a little bit better.”
A concerned resident brought up an issue of tractor trailers going in and out of Harrington’s.

“That’s why it’s 90 [feet wide] there, to make that turn. When they come in, they sit there until they can back in,” the resident said. “There’s nobody to back them in and there’s a car behind them, they have to wait until someone comes out to help.”

After a handful of community members agreed with this worry, Nelson expressed an interest in reaching out to Harrington’s specifically to help in finding a solution.

“We are going to take the information that you’ve shared with us today and go back and develop two concept plans for the complete street,” Nelson said. “We will come back and hold a second meeting, and we are hoping to do that in early March time frame, where we will take more feedback from that.”

After the second public information meeting, they will turn the community’s ideas into a preferred plan to present to the Village board, which is planned for April. This will show the specific cost plans and the ballpark of the low and high cost production.
“We’re not talking about changing the street in the next two years,” said Nelson. “We’re probably about changing the street in the next five years, if we are successful in getting the grant funds.”

The meeting ended with a table exercise of residents and community members writing on maps of the street, stating how they use the area or what they would like to see in the future.

“Feel free to mark them up,” Nelson said. “I’m happy to take notes from anyone who’s got thoughts on how this road can be used better.”